Mersenne, Marin (1588–1648)

Know this topic well? Help others and get FREE products!

Marin Mersenne, a French mathematician, philosopher, and scientist, was one of the most influential figures of the scientific and philosophical revolutions of the seventeenth century. Although he is remembered primarily for his relationship with René Descartes, he was a significant figure in his own right and also, through his immense correspondence, publications, and personal acquaintances, a key figure in coordinating and advancing the work of the new philosophers and scientists.

He was born at Oizé, France, and studied at Le Mans and later at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, from 1604 to 1609. (Descartes, eight years his junior, was there from 1604 to 1612, but their friendship began later, around 1623.) He next studied in Paris and then entered the pious and austere order of the Minims. After further theological studies Mersenne taught philosophy at a convent in Nevers until 1619, when he was sent back to Paris by his order. He remained there until his death in 1648, except for some trips to The Netherlands, Italy, and the French provinces. His Parisian monastic cell was the center of the European scientific world, as scholars, scientists, philosophers, and theologians often made their way to Mersenne's quarters.

From 1623 to 1625 Mersenne published several enormous polemical works attacking all sorts of Renaissance outlooks and figures, ranging from atheists, deists, kabbalists, astrologers, and numerologists to Pyrrhonists. These writings include the Questiones Celeberrimae in Genesim (1623), L'impiété des deists, athées et libertins de ce temps, combatuë, et renversée (1624), and La vérité des sciences contre les septiques ou Pyrrhoniens (1625). The last work, more than a thousand pages long, was the culmination of this phase of Mersenne's career and the beginning of the scientific phase that was to continue until his death. Thereafter, his writings were on all sorts of scientific and mathematical subjects (including the famous Harmonie universelle [1636–1637] on the theory of music, harmonics, and acoustics) and were compendiums of the knowledge in these areas.

Mersenne became involved in the publication of fundamental works of his friends or correspondents, such as Galileo Galilei's Mechanics (translated by Mersenne), the objections to Descartes's Meditations (gathered by Mersenne), Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate (in a translation by Mersenne), Thomas Hobbes's De Cive (the publication of which was arranged by Mersenne), and François de La Mothe Le Vayer's Discours sceptique sur la musique (published in Mersenne's Questions harmoniques). He also carried on a monumental correspondence that provides a magnificent running record of the intellectual revolution of the time. Mersenne was actively interested in an enormous range of scientific and pseudoscientific questions, from the most complex ones in physics, mathematics, and Hebrew philology to such ones as "How high was Jacob's ladder?" and "Why do wise men earn less money than fools?"

His major philosophical contributions were his massive refutation of skepticism, La vérité des sciences, and his later discussions of the nature of scientific knowledge. La vérité des sciences is a dialogue between a skeptic, an alchemist, and a Christian philosopher (Mersenne). The skeptic uses his arguments to show that alchemy is not a true science. When he broadens his attack to encompass all claims to knowledge of the real nature of things, Mersenne's Christian philosopher offers his own resolution to the skeptical crisis, starting with a detailed examination of Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism. He repeatedly contends that although the Pyrrhonian arguments may show that one cannot know the real nature of things, one can gain knowledge of the apparent, phenomenal world in terms of how it seems to one and how the various appearances are related. Although one's sense experiences vary and although one cannot tell what objects are really like, one can find laws that enable one to connect and, thus, to predict experiences. Although one cannot find any absolutely certain first principles, one can discover enough indubitable ones to enable one to construct systematic information about one's experienced world. "This limited knowledge suffices to serve us as the guide for our actions." One is able to know something—namely, the sciences of phenomena—and this has adequate pragmatic value for one in this life. Francis Bacon was trying to find out too much and was raising too many insoluble skeptical problems with his Idols. Instead, the ultimate answer to skepticism was to show how much one could and did, in fact, know. The last 800 pages of the work is a listing of what is known in mathematics and mathematical physics—until the Pyrrhonist gives in. He has been conquered not by being refuted but by being shown what sort of knowledge one can have once one grants that knowledge about reality is unattainable.

Mersenne was willing to accept the skeptic's claims but was unwilling to see them establish that nothing can be known. Instead, he saw an epistemological skepticism as the prelude to a "constructive or mitigated skepticism" which would allow a scientific and systematic development of the truths of the sciences of the empirical world. The rest of Mersenne's life was devoted to his religious duty, exploring in phenomenalistic terms what could be known about the world God had made. Mersenne's immense contribution to the scientific revolution was the result of his positive views. Although he had originally portrayed skepticism as one of the greatest menaces to humankind, he continued to insist in his scientific tracts that one can gain no certain knowledge about reality but can study only the surfaces of things as they appear to one and employ mathematics as a hypothetical system about things. Like his close friend Pierre Gassendi (in whose arms he died), Mersenne saw scientific endeavors as a via media between complete skepticism and dogmatism. Mersenne tended to emphasize the antiskeptical aspect of this view, whereas Gassendi tended to emphasize the antidogmatic one.

In his formulations of the new science Mersenne was probably the first to use a mechanical model to account for the world that one experiences and to develop a thoroughgoing phenomenalism (although hardly as well worked out as Gassendi's) adequate to state the findings and assumptions of modern science. Mersenne's lifelong devotion to science and scientists can apparently be attributed to their common quest for more information and understanding of the phenomenal world. Hence, Mersenne could see in Descartes a major contributor to the scientific revolution but could see nothing important in his metaphysical revolution. Descartes, Hobbes, Herbert of Cherbury, Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, Galileo, and others were, for Mersenne, together in seeking the truth of the sciences, although some of them still had illusions that more truth than that could be discovered. For Mersenne, science had no metaphysical foundations and needed none. "Until it pleases God to deliver us from this misery," one can find no ultimate knowledge, but one can, if one is not destructively skeptical, proceed to gain and use scientific knowledge.

Bacon, Francis; Descartes, René; Galileo Galilei; Gassendi, Pierre; Herbert of Cherbury; Hobbes, Thomas; La Mothe Le Vayer, François De; Pascal, Blaise; Scientific Revolutions; Sextus Empiricus; Skepticism, History Of.

Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne. 17 vols., edited by Paul Tannery, Cornélis de Waard, and René Pintard. Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1933–1988.

L'impiété des déistes, athées et libertins de ce temps. Stuttgart, Germany: Frommann, 1975.

Questions inouyes, Questions harmoniques, Questions théologiques, Les méchaniques de Galilée, Les préludes de l'harmonie universelle. Paris: Fayard, 1985.

La vérité des sciences contre les sceptiques ou pyrrhoniens, edited and annotated by Dominique Descotes. Paris: Champion, 2003.

Traité de l'harmonie universelle, edited by Claudio Buccolini. Paris: Fayard, 2003.

Chappell, Vere. Grotius to Gassendi. New York: Garland, 1992.

Dear, Peter. Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Lenoble, Robert. Mersenne, ou, La naissance du mécanisme. Paris: J. Vrin, 1943.

Popkin, Richard H. History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Sorell, Tom. The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1993.

Vickers, Brian. Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

This is the complete article, containing 1,326 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).